April 6, 2020 marks the 500-year anniversary of the passing of one of the most beloved artists. A huge Raphael exhibition at the Scuderia del Quirinale in Rome could only open in March for few days before the whole of Italy went on quarantine. Now these masterpieces are hanging on the walls in completely empty halls.

It was designed to be a once-in-a-lifetime loan exhibition on the scale of the Louvre’s show of da Vinci last year. It was meant as a celebration of one of the greatest painters in art history, a man who spent most of his creative years in Rome, and whose frescoes and oils draw excited crowds in any place they can be viewed. It was to be an exhibition to commemorate 500 years of Raphael’s passing, assembling his masterpieces at an exposition hall called Scuderia del Quirinale located in one of the presidential palaces in Rome. Like so many thousands of art lovers, I still have tickets to this exhibition, now meaningless bits of paper, while the paintings, tapestries, documents, and sculptures are facing empty and silent rooms of the Scuderia. The exhibition had to close after opening for a few days in early March, succumbing to the inexorable progress of the virus across the globe. Italy, the heart of the world of fine art, is on a lockdown. I’m trying to imagine what we would have seen.

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